Trump’s Philly visit was part of his strategy to win over Pa.’s Black voters. Is it working?
Trump is looking to significantly increase the level of support from Black voters that he had in 2016 when he beat Hillary Clinton. I keep asking myself: Is that feasible?
As Beyoncé sings, “This ain’t Texas.”
Philly isn’t MAGA country, either. Far from it. The city’s population is roughly 40% Black. But you wouldn’t have known that judging from the crowd inside Temple University’s Liacouras Center at Saturday night’s campaign rally for Donald Trump.
Given Trump’s long history of making racist statements, it’s a wonder that any African Americans came out at all. But some were there — dressed in red, white, and blue (but especially red) and carrying campaign signs. I had a hard time keeping my face straight. I wanted to yell, “What are you thinking?”
Since then, I’ve spent a good part of the last few days fielding texts from worried Never Trumpers and reaching out to political strategists to try to get a better sense of the former president’s tactics for wooing African American voters — and whether it seems to be working. We’ve all seen the polling data about the gains Trump has made with Black voters. The Biden campaign has dismissed the numbers, and many commentators say the levels of support are overstated. Indeed, Black voters still overwhelmingly favor President Joe Biden.
But we can’t afford to ignore the inroads Trump has made in the Black community as we head into political convention season and on to November. Trump surrogates have said that they feel confident about their candidate’s chances if he can win double-digit percentages of Black voters — including more than 20% of African American men. That would build significantly on the roughly 8% of the Black vote that Trump received when he beat Hillary Clinton in 2016.
As I left the Liacouras Center Saturday, I kept looking around and asking myself: Is that feasible?
Since then, I’ve spoken with Berwood A. Yost, a director of the Center for Opinion Research at Franklin and Marshall College, who said Trump’s strategy of courting Black voters in Philly may look like “a stretch.” After all, “why would you go somewhere you don’t really have a chance to win?” asked Yost, who’s also director of the Floyd Institute for Public Policy at Franklin and Marshall.
However, he pointed out that if Trump manages to get 15% of the local vote, that could help him win Pennsylvania, adding “you can have some impact in a race that probably will be decided by a few hundred thousand votes statewide.”
In 2020, Biden won Pennsylvania by 80,555 votes. Roughly 15% of the city’s 2020 voter turnout would have been about 48,000 votes.
J. Wesley Leckrone, who chairs the political science department at Widener University, said pretty much the same thing as Yost: “Even minor shifts in traditional voting patterns have the potential to push a candidate to victory.”
On Saturday, there were plenty of Black Philadelphians at the Trump rally who were already pushing Trump along.
Annette Moore, a 56-year-old West Philly resident who works as a home-care aide, managed to snag a prime seat behind the stage, which made her visible on the televised live stream.
“I’m tired of Joe [Biden],” Moore told me. “Joe was too slow. He’s sleeping on the job and so he forced me to turn into a Republican. Sometimes you’ve got to make changes.”
Then there was Brent Washington, a 58-year-old retired postal worker, who wore a navy blue Trump-themed “Save America” hat pulled over his long salt-and-pepper locs as he headed out of the arena. I stopped him and asked him about his reasons for supporting Trump.
The Germantown resident cited Biden’s support of the 1994 crime bill, which critics say led to mass incarcerations. He added that he feels Biden is allowing the country to be destroyed by not doing more to secure U.S. borders and keep out illegal drugs. “I don’t live in Kensington but I know about Kensington,” he said of the lower Northeast neighborhood that has long struggled with drug use, crime, and homelessness. “I know open borders is all a part of that.”
I tried but failed to conceal my shock when Washington revealed that he had never voted before 2016 when he cast his first ballot ever for Trump. “I didn’t vote for [former President Barack] Obama; 2016 was the first time I ever voted in my life,” he told me. “Because Trump spoke truth to me and I could see where they were lying about him.”
Some of the people I spoke with Saturday told me that they think a lot of African Americans vote Democratic out of habit — and not because they really believe in a particular candidate.
Nia Nkrumah, a 38-year-old nurse from the Northeast, said, “We need to just educate ourselves and educate our children and not just sit [looking at] the news all day and on social media all day and regurgitate the same story over and over again.”
I got the distinct impression from some of those I spoke with that they think they are being contrarian by supporting Trump. Have they not heard about Trump’s Project 2025 plan by the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation that would fire thousands of government employees and replace them with Trump loyalists? Have they not heard that Trump wants to institute mass deportations?
Have they forgotten how he incited a mob attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, because he lost the presidential election? On Saturday, he repeatedly called Biden “crooked” when Trump’s the one who has been ordered to pay $454 million for lying about his wealth. He’s the one who was found guilty of sexual assault and ordered to pay advice columnist E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million for defamation. The first former president ever convicted of a felony, Trump is awaiting sentencing on 34 charges.
Do Trump’s Black supporters not know the unemployment rate for African Americans under Biden is at a record low? Do they not care about Trump’s unflinching support for guns that are killing so many Black males? Did they forget that Trump’s last cabinet was dominated by privileged white males? Or his long record of attacking Black women?
Trump can try to bamboozle some voters as he did Saturday when he told dozens of lies to supporters who attended the rally at Temple University. But the truth is that Trump is all about Trump. African Americans — and people of all backgrounds, for that matter — who support him aren’t doing anything except voting against their own interests.